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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



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Chap.?_r_„ Copyright JS T o., 
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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT 



THE 
MASQUE OF JUDGMENT 

A Masque-Drama 
In Five Acts and a Prelude 

By 
WILLIAM VAUGHN MOODY 




Boston 
Small, Maynard & Company 



m c M 



i 



Copyright ipoo by 
Small, Maynard & Company 

(Incorporated) 



Entered at Stationers' Hall 






.Hz 



Library of Congress 

Two Copies Received 
NOV 13 1900 



No* 



SECOND COPY 

Dd»v<ired to- 

£R DIVISION 
21 190U 



Press of 
George H. Ellis 
Boston, U.S.A. 



To E. D. S. 



PRELUDE 



The action falls immediately before the Incarnation 



Persons of the Prelude 



RAPHAEL 

URIEL 

THE ANGEL OF THE PALE HORSE 

A SHEPHERD 

A SHEPHERD BOY 

A YOUNG MAN (persona muta) 

A GIRL 



SCENE I. 

A meadow and coppice near the sea; beyond low 
hills the roofs of a town. Dawn. 

Raphael. 
Another night like this would change my blood 
To human: the soft tumult of the sea 
Under the moon, the panting of the stars, 
The notes of querulous love from pool and clod, 
In earth and air the dreamy under-hum 
Of hived hearts swarming, — such another night 
Would quite unsphcre me from my angelhood! 
Thrice have I touched my lute's least human 

strings 
And hushed their throbbing, hearing how they 

spake 
Sheer earthly, they that once so heavenly sang 
Above the pure unclouded psalmody. 
Sing as thou wilt, then, since thou needs must 

sing ! 
For ever song grows dearer as I walk 
These evenings of large sunset, these dumb noons 
Vastly suspended, these enormous nights 
Through which earth heaves her bulk toward 

the dawn. 
With song I shelter me, who else were left 

3 



THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT 

Defenceless amid God's infinitudes, 
Bruised by the unshod trample of his hours. 

(He sings. ) 
The late moon would not stay, 
The stars grow far and few ; 
Into her house of day 
Hung with Sidonian blue 
Stealeth the earth, as a msenad girl 
Steals to her home when the orgies are o'er 
That startled the glens and the sleeping shore, 
And up from the passionate deeps of night 
Into the shallows and straits of light 
Softly the forests whirl. 

Laugh, earth ! For thy feigning-face is wise ; 
There is naught so clear as thy morning eyes; 
And the sun thy lord is an easy lord ! 
What should they be to him, — 
Thine hours of dance in the woodland dim, 
The brandished torch and the shouted word, 
The flight, the struggle, the honeyed swoon 
Neath the wild, wild lips of the moon 1 

Beyond the seaward screen of hazel boughs 
The waves flash argent 'neath the clambering 

light ; 
But wherefore do these wondrous colours run 



THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT 

Out of the place of morning ? The young leaves 
Are swept and winnowed upward as a flame, 
And in their whispering glories swiftly dawns 
A shape of lordly wings, each plume distinct 
With dyes auroral. Where, ? mid store of light, 
Most spiritual silver burns, a face comes through. 
My comrade Uriel cometh from the sun ! 

Uriel (appearing). 
Why tarriest on thine errand, Eaphael 7 

Raplwd. 
I do no errand here. 

Uriel. 
Why earnest thou then t 

Raphael. 
Since earth is dear to me. Sometimes it seems — 
Treading the prairie's autumn sibilance, 
Or when the tongues of summer lightning speak 
In the corners of the cloud — I could forget 
My station ? mid the deathless hierarchies, 
And change into a clot of anxious clay. 

Uriel. 
Mock not, sweet brother ! thou who knowest 

well — 
Better than I or Michael or the rest — 



THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT 

The throes that shake these clots of passionate 

clay; 
Knowest their lewd harsh blood, their shell of 

sense 
So frail, so piteously contrived for pain. 

Raphael. 
I dare to say how little jest it was. 
Oft, as I leave these sliding shafts of dark, 
And homeward climb the immaterial cliffs, 
My heart makes question which were worthier 

state 
For a free soul to choose, — angelic calm, 
Angelic vision, ebbless, increscent, 
Or earth-life with its Teachings and recoils, 
Its lewd harsh blood so swift to change and flower 
At the least touch of love, its shell of sense 
So subtly made to minister them delight, 
So frail, so piteously contrived for pain. 

Uriel. 
Brother, thou dost not well to wander here. 
If thou wilt roam, choose some less troubled star. 
The roaring midst of the insatiate sun 
Where God has set my watch, is peace to this ! 
Of all the bitter drops that dewed His brow 
In his old agony, this earth-drop fell 

6 



THE MASQUE OP JUDGMENT 

Most bitter salt, and ever since hath been 
Fuller of travailling than other worlds. 

Raphael. 
Thy speech is dark. I understand it not. 

Uriel. 
Of a dark thing I speak a few dark words. 
Put from thy gaze the sweet bloom of these hills 
And all this gorgeous dapple of the sea, 
And let thy memory stand again with me 
On Time's untrodden threshold, that first day 
Which searched and stung our immemorial 

peace 
With pangs of vernal influence. Heaven rose 
As if from sleep, and, lo ! through all the void 
Clambered and curled creation like a vine, 
Hanging the dark with clusters of young bloom. 
Then from the viewless ever-folded heart 
Of the mystic Eose, stole breath and pulse of 

change, 
Delicious pantings such as seize the breast 
Of lovers when the love-tide nears its flood, 
Yet touched with endless potency of pain, 
As lips of mothers when their anguish ebbs 
And leaves the waifling life. Then first the 

Dove 



THE MASQUE OP JUDGMENT 

Began to mourn above the mercy-seat, 

And the dear sister spirits of the Lamps 

Bent all their shimmering wings one way to 

screen 
Their wicks from the wind-flaw. Large with 

question turned 
Angelic eyes to archangelic eyes, 
Archangels laid changed lips to the ears of 

Thrones, 
Thrones gazed at Dominations, Powers made sign 
To Principalities ; but not one dared, 
Voicing the fear that filled him, to cry, "Lord, 
What hast Thou brought upon Thy kingdom, 

Thou 

Ancient of Days ! ? ' Their silence was right 

well. 

Baphael. 

All this the meditative spirits oft 

Have pondered. But thy meaning still is dark. 

Uriel. 
Ourselves who questioned why the world was 

made 
Were born of the same questionable seed, 
And we who feared were the first cause of fear. 
Of a dark thing I speak a few dark words. 
Of old the mind of God, coiled on itself 

8 



THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT 

In contemplation single and eterne, 
Felt suddenly a stealing wistfulness 
Sully the essence of his old content 
With pangs of dim division. Long He strove 
Against his bosom's deep necessity, 
Then, groping for surcease, put forth the orbs 
Of Paradise, with all their imagery, 
And the ordered hierarchies where we stand ; 
Some sharing more in his essential calm, 
Some, rebel spirits, banished now or quelled, 
The ill-starred sons of his disquietude, — 
Disquietude not quenched when fell the pride 
Of Lucifer, long bastioned in the North. 
Demand of joy, hardly to be gainsaid, 
And vast necessity of grief, still worked 
Compulsive in his breast : our essence calm, 
Those lucid orbs accordant) could not bring 
Nepenthe long. His hand He still withheld 
Ages of ages, fearing the event, 
Till, bathed in brighter urge and wistfulness 
He put forth suddenly this vine of Time 
And hung the hollow dark with passionate 
change. 

BoffkaeL 

I think for me Heaven seemed not Heaven till 

then, 
When from our seats of peace we could behold 

9 



THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT 

The strife of ripening suns and withering moons, 

Marching of ice-floes, and the nameless wars 

Of monster races laboring to be man ; 

When we could hear the wrestle of hoarse sound 

Hurl gust on gust obscurely toward the time 

Of disinvolvM music : till at last, 

Standing erect amid the giant fern — 

Uriel. 
At last ! At last ! O shaken Breast, nowhere 
Couldst thou find quiet save in putting forth 
This last imagination ? Could no form 
Of being stanch thee in thy groping thought 
Save this of Man? Puny and terrible 5 
Apt to imagine powers beyond himself 
In wind and lightning ; cunning to evoke 
From mould and flint-stone the surprising fire, 
And carve the heavy hills to spiritual shapes 
Of town and temple ; nursing in his veins 
More restlessness than called him from the void, 
Perfidies, hungers, dreams, idolatries, 
Pain, laughter, wonder, anger, sex, and song ! 

Bwphael. 
God had one other thought, more sweet, more 

dire; 
Thy latest words remind thee. 

10 



THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT 

{Behind the trees a girVs voice sings : — ) 
O daughters of Jerusalem ! 
What said ye unto her 
Who took her love by the garment's hem, 
Where the tanned grape-gatherers were ? 
Did any go down and see 
If she led him into her house ? 
Or was it aloft where the wild harts flee, 
Was it high in the hills, ' neath the cedar- tree, 
That she kissed him and called him spouse ? 

(A young man and a girl come over the hill from 
the town.) 

Ur!(L Unto man 

Woman was due. To hearts of fire more fire, 
To pride of strength a still subduing strength. 

(As they pass through the coppice, the girl sings: — ) 
O keepers of the city walls ! 
Have ye taken her veil away, 
Whose hasting feet and low love-calls 
Ye heard at the drop of day f 
Have ye taken her ankle-rings, 
Who is fair, who hath eyes like a dove! 
Must she seek her lover, her king of kings, 
Naked, stripped of her costly things f 
Must she have no garment but love f 

11 



SCENE II. 
A mountain glade and forest Midnight. 

Shepherd. 
Here stand, if thou wilt see, by this great bole. 
This way they passed, and hither should return. 
But pray thee, gentle god, when they draw near 
Abate the splendor of thy face, fold close 
Thine eyed and irised plumage. God thou art, 
But thou must needs be mighty to escape 
The hill girls when they rage ! From these old 

boughs 
The climbing moon will soon pour deeper shade 
To screen thee more. 

Raphael. 
How looked they when they passed ! 

Shepherd Boy. 

Coney, how passed the hailstorm o'er, quotha ! 
Patter ! patter ! 'twas sung beneath i' the dark. 
I lost a birch cup full of whortleberries 
Scrambling to cover when I heard their songs. 
But when they burst across the glade, I peeped, 
And saw their breasts gleam through their angry 
hair, 

12 



THE MASQUE OP JUDGMENT 

Evoe ! they had snared the village lad 
They hanker for so long. I hear them talk, 
Dawdling on well- curbs with their water-skins 
Or picking the May-apples. 

Shepherd. 

'Tis the lad 
Who sat mute at the merry threshing-stead, 
Turned from their orgies in the sacred wood 
With large bright eyes unamorous, and sang 
In lonesome places piercing lonesome songs 
Of other lives and other gods than theirs — 
Perchance of thee and thy bright- winged mates, 
If mates be thine, for god thou surely art. 

Shepherd Boy. 

To-night they have him limed ! Brow of the 

hawk, 
Throat of the hermit- thrush, and ring-dove eyes ! 

Shepherd. 
He came across the moon-drench dragged by 

three 
Whose bodies shone like the peeled willow wand ; 
The little snakes they knot into their hair 
Lipping his neck, where oozed the red of grapes 
From his crushed garland ; his hands flung aloft 

13 



THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT 

To the symbol of their fierce licentious god. 
His eyes were large and fixed, his lips apart, 
As I have seen him in the lonesome woods, 
But madder than the maddest bacchant there ! 

Raphad. 
Who cometh yonder f 

Shepherd. 
Where? 

Raphael. 

Across the glade. 

Shepherd. 
I see nought. 

Rapliael. 
There, behind the trailing mist. 
The moonlight gathers to a ghostly shape, 
Unearthly silver, throbbing like a heart ! 
It seems a beast and rider. 

{The shepJierds make off. ) 

Ah, I know 
That icy influence, and the voice I know, 
First heard in Heaven when time began to be, — 
A voice above our voices, and a hush 
Beneath our hush, freezing the heart with fear, 
With fear the heart even of spirit-kind. . . . 

14 



THE MASQUE OP JUDGMENT 

The Angel of the Pale Horse (sings). 

The scourge of the wrath of God 

We swing and we stay : 

(Rest, my steed, rest /) 

On the green of the hill we have trod, 

And the green is grey. 

Ours is his scourging rod. 

Tea, thy hoofs long to be fleet 

On the armied hills ; 

( Yet rest, my steed, rest /) 

Scent of the arrowy sleet 

Broadens thy nostrils ; 

The mown field smelleth sweet 

God giveth his loins' increase 

Into our hand ; 

(Rest, my steed, rest!) 

We shall establish his peace 

By sea and by land. 

Soon shall their troubling cease ! 

Raphael. 
What makes thine errand here t 

Angel of Vie Pale Horse. 

Still as of old. 
15 



THE MASQUE OP JUDGMENT 

Raphael. 
I think thou art way- wandered. Here is life. 

Angel of the Pale Horse 
My horse's feet err not ; they are way- wise. 

Raphael. 
Stand by me in the shade of these old boughs. 
And let no anger fan thy wings alight 
Or flake the nostrils of thy horse with fire 
When the young bacchants halloo down the 

steep. 

Angel of the Rale Horse. 

Thou feedest thy giddy and half- human mind 
Still on these little spectacles of change. 
Forgetting Heaven's great woes ! 

Raphael. 

What woe can come 
Into those courts of old oeatitude ? 

Angel of the Pale Horse. 
Hast thou not felt its presence there ? 

Raphael. ^ 

* Yes — nay — 

I know not . • . When I enter Heaven gate, 

Fear comes upon me, for I seem to feel 

16 



THE MASQUE OP JUDGMENT 

Some subtle waning of accustomed joy. 
Some dying off of music — thin, minute, 
As the single cricket amid chorusing fields, 
Whose ceasing breaks the rapture. Often, too, 
Wan faces shun me in the woods of light 
And voices of vague dolor die away 
Along the living lilies as I come. 
But this I held a phantasy of dream, 
Bred of too earnest looking on the blight 
That falls on mortal things. 

Angel of the Pale Horse. 

It is no dream ; 
Though more mysterious, more dark than dream. 
Momently fades the splendor, momently 
Silence and dissonance like eating moths 
Scatter corruption on the choiring orbs. 

Raphael. 
No one declares the cause ? 

Angel of the Pale Horse. 

The cause is here, — 
Here in the vagrant courses of the moon, 
Who makes her lair and wanders for her love 
After her own loose law ; in yonder stars, 
Gay spendthrifts of their plenitude of fire ; 
In this most dissolute earth, who decks herself 

17 



THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT 

With gorgeous phantasy and delicate whini, 
And paces forth before the worlds to dance 
A maiden measure, modest lids downcast 
To hide her harlot's guile ; but more than these, 
And more than all, unutterably more, 
Here in the wild and sinful heart of man, — 
Of all the fruits upon creation's vine 
The thirstiest one to drain the vital breast 
Of God, wherein it grows. 

Raphael. 

Too fiery sweet 
Gushes the liquor from the vine He set, 
Man the broad leaf and maid the honeyed flower ! 

{The shepherds creep back, and stand peering from 
behind the tree at the angels. ) 

Raphael (musing). 
What if they rendered up their wills to His 1 
Hushed and subdued their personality ? 
Became as members of the living tree? 

Angel of the Pale Horse. 
A whisper grows, various from tongue to tongue, 
That so He will attempt. Those who consent 
To render up their clamorous wills to Him, 

18 



THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT 

To merge their fretful being in his peace, 
He will accept : the rest He will destroy. 

{The boy ichispers to Raphael.) 

Raphael. 
What wilt thou, little friend ? 

ShepJierd Boy. 
Hither, sweet god ! But let the ghostly centaur 
stay behind. 

Shepherd. 
Lean o'er this rock and look into the gorge. 
See how their torches dip from ledge to ledge. 
They race beside some shape the torrent bears : 
The eddies seize it now, and leaning out 
Over the pool they stop to howl their hymns, 
And, now it plunges, how they madden down 
With laughter keen above the drumming foam ! 

BaphtoL 

Is't not a man's torn trunk? 

Shepherd Boy. 

See those behind 
Grasping the antlers of the lunging stag, 
That bellows when their torches bite his flanks ! 
I know the witch who rides him ! 

19 



THE MASQUE OP JUDGMENT 

Raphael. ~ , 

Come away ! 

That is a bleeding head she holds aloft 

Above the clutching of her comrades' hands ! 

Shepherd Boy. 
No more thou' It shun their orgies in the wood, 
Throat of the hermit- thrush and ring-dove eyes ! 
Throat of the mourning thrush, thy songs are 

done ; 
Sad ring-dove eyes, the lids have shut you in ! 

Shepherd. 
That is his harp the dancers bear before, 
Mocking his solemn songs of other gods 
And other lives than theirs. 

Eaphael (musing). 

Those who consent 
He will accept : the rest he will destroy ! 

Shepherd Boy. 
Look ! look ! the ghostly centaur goeth down. 



20 



A C T I. 



Time : as in the Prelude 



Persons of the Masque 



RAPHAEL 
URIEL 
MICHAEL 
AZAZIEL 
THE ANGEL OF THE PALE HORSE 
THE ANGEL OF THE WHITE HORSE 
THE ANGEL OF THE RED HORSE 
SPIRITS OF THE THRONE-LAMPS 
THE LION OF THE THRONE 
THE EAGLE OF THE THRONE 
THE ANGEL OF THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE 
SPIRITS OF THE SAVED 
SPIRITS OF THE LOST 
MOON-SPIRITS 
VOICES 



22 



ACT L SCENE I. 

A high mountain pass, down ichichfloics a brook y 
icith pools and icat erf alls. Early morning. 

Raphael (climbing, sings). 
On earth all is well, all is well on the sea ; 
Though the day breaks dull 
All is well. 

Ere the thunder had ceased to yell 
I flew through the wash of the sea 
Wing and wing with my brother the gull. 
On the crumbling comb of the swell, 
With the spindrift slashing to lee, 
Poised we ; 

The petrel thought us asleep 
Till sidewise round on stiffened wing, 
Keen and taut to take the swing 
With the glass-green avalanches in their swerv- 
ing plunge and sweep, 
Down the glassy, down the prone, 
Swift as swerving thunder-stone, 
We shot the green crevasses 
And we hallooed down the passes 
Of the deep. 

On earth all is well, all is well 

In the weeds of the beach lay the shell 

23 



I 



THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT 

With the sleeper within, 

And the pulse of the sleeper showed through 

The walls of his delicate house 

That will wake with the sun into silver and 

purple and blue. 
Where the creek makes out and the sea makes in 
Between the low cliff-brows 
Was borne the talk of the aldered linn 
Matching the meadow's subtile din ; 
And hark, from the grey high overhead 
The lark's keen joy was shed ! 
For what though the morning sulky was 
And the punctual sun belated, 
His nest was snug in the tufted grass, 
Soft-lined and stoutly plaited, 
And shine sun may or stay away 
Nests must be celebrated ! 

Drowsy with dawn, barely asail, 
Buzzes the blue-bottle over the shale, 
Scared from the pool by the leaping trout ; 
And the brood of turtlings clamber out 
On the log by their oozy house. 
Bound the roots of the cresses and stems of the ferns 
The muskrat goes by dodges and turns ; 
Till she has seized her prey she heeds not the 
whine of her mouse. 

24 



THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT 

Lovingly, spitefully, each 

Kind unto kind makes speech ; 

Marriage and birth and war, passion and hunger 

and thirst, 
Song and plotting and dream, as it was meant 

from the first ! 

(He clwibs higher ', and sings. ) 

Peering in the dust I thought 
"How all creatures, small and great, 
For his pleasure God hath wrought ! " 

When I saw the robins mate 
Low I sang unto my harp, 
"Happy, happy, His estate ! 

"Down curved spaces He may warp 
With old planets ; long and long, 
Where the snail doth tease and carp, 

"Asking with its jellied prong, 
A whole summer He may bide, 
Wondrous tiny lives among, 
Curious, unsatisfied." 

(Still climbing. ) 

The trees grow stunted in this keener air, 
And scarce the hardiest blossoms dara.to take 
Assurance from the sun. Southward the rocks 

25 



THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT 

Boast mosses and a poor increase of flowers, 
But all the northern shelters hold their snow. 
Such flowers as come, come not quite flower- 
like, 
But smitten from their gracious habitudes 
By some alarm, some vast and voiceless cry 
That just has ceased to echo ere I came. 
These white buds stand unnaturally white, 
Breathing no odors till their terror pass ; 
Those grey souls toss their arms into the wind, 
Peer through their locks with bright distracted 

eyes 
And hug the elfin horror to their breasts — 
Poor brain-turned gypsy wildlings, doomed to 

birth 
In this uneasy region ! . . . Yonder lift 
The outposts of the habitable land. 
Ages of looking on the scene beyond 
Have worn the granite into shapes of woe 
And old disaster. 

{Re climbs higher, to where the ravine debouches 
into the Valley of the Judgment ) 

Each time when I stand 
Upon the borders of this monstrous place, 
I still must question wherefore it was flung 
Thus ruinous with toppled peak and scaur, 

26 



THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT 

Sheer from the morning cliffs that hold up 

Heaven 
To nether caverns where no foot of man 
Has clambered down, nor eye of angel dared 
To spy upon the sluggish denizens, 
If any dwell so deep. What giant plow 
Harnessed to behemoth and mastodon 
Set this slope furrow down the side of the world ? 
And to what harvest? . . . Here the sons of 

men, 
Living and dead and yet unborn, might come 
Unto the final judgment ; here the lost 
Might make one desperate stand. . . . What 

moveth there! 
What leonine and winged shape is he 
Steals up yon gorge all desolate of light 
Whence voices of fierce-tongued and desperate 

streams 
Sound faint as throats of nooning doves? Till 

now 
Never have I beheld a living thing 
Amid these wastes. What manner beast is he 
That he hath power to awe me, though removed 
So far the fallen vastness of a cliff 
Wherefrom a temple might be quarried, looks 
Fit for a shepherd's sling? . . . Surely he 

comes 

27 



THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT 

From nameless battle yonder in the depths ; 
But whither steals he homeward there aloft? 
What lair is his cloud-hidden in the snows, 
Whose mates and loves wait 'neath the desert 

palms 
To hear him tell his deed ? Huge was the fight 
That left that mighty prowess broken so ! 
For sorely is he broken : now he stops 
And lies exhausted by an icy pool, 
Now labors up the shale, skirts the bald top, 
Drops with fierce caution down the further 

slope 
Eyeing the next hard pass. I wonder . . . f 

No 

Strange ! 'twas a blood- drop fell upon that flower 
A-tremble from the brink. Another here 
Upon the ground-moss — nay, upon my hand — 
It falls all round me ! . . . (Looking upward) 

Ah, an eagle goes 
Lame from the battle, mate or duellist 
Of him who crept by yonder. Even here 
I see the vast wings, shattered and unpenned, 
Almost refuse their labor ; now he swerves 
To rest upon a needled dolomite, 
Then upward grievously another stage 
Toward some sad eyrie where his heart abides. 

28 



THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT 

I too must seek ray eyrie — sad enough, 
Since there my heart abides not any more, 
Amid the waste infinitudes of light 
Missing the flow of day, the refluent dark ; 
Amid the bliss of unconcerning eyes 
Eemembering woman's anguish, man's resolve. 
Youth's wistful darling guess, kindled and 

quenched 
And quenched and kindled yet a little year 
In eyes too frail to hold their meaning long 
Where chance and enmity conspire with death. 

(He flies up the Valley.) 



29 



ACT I. SCENE II. 

Above the peaks that crown the head of the Valley 
of Judgment. 

Raphael (flying). 
Soon will the cliffs of Heaven give easier way, 
For though my heart grows human, yet my frame 
With immaterial things accordance keeps, 
And to my feet these spiritual hills 
Feel native, and the climate kind to breathe ; 
Still kindlier for the shredded mist of song 
That wanders here at morning and at eve 
Whispering witless words and prophecy. 

Voices (above). 
Through the vines of tangled light 
In the jungles of the sun 
Swept the Hunter in his might 
And his lion-beagle dun 
Gaped for prey to left and right. 

O'er the passes of the moon 
Strode the Hunter in his wrath : 
The eagle sniffed the icy noon, 
" Master, knowest thou the path? 
Shall we meet thy foe-man soon ? 

30 



THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT 

"On what interstellar plain, 
'Mid what comet's blinding haze, 
Storm of star dust, meteor rain, 
Shall we spy his crouching gaze, 
Leap at him, and end thy pain! " 

Peace is on the heavenly meres, 
Sabbath lies on Paradise ; 
But the little Throne-lamp fears, 
For she sees the Master's eyes, 
And she tastes the Master's tears. 

Eaphael. 
Many an age your song has hovered round 
This theme of Heaven's distress. What mean ye 

now? 
Was that the lion-hound of which ye sing 
Crept wounded hither, masterless, this hour t 

Voices (as before). 
Where had his gadding spirit led! 
Beside what peopled water-head 
Stooped he, or on what sleeping face 
Was he intent the dream to trace ? 
Had creature love upon him fawned 
Or had he drunk of mortal mirth 
That he knew not what a morning dawned 

31 



THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT 

Over his darling earth ? 
Heard not the storm, heard not the cries, 
Heard not the talk of the startled skies 
Over the guilty earth f 

Baphael. 
Those dubious voices fade, and in their stead 
Succeeds a sound more anxious and perturbed, 
Voices and mutterings of supernal wrath 
Or whisperings of fear. . . . Ah, there aloft 
Upon the beetling rosy crag they stand, 
The pale horse and the white horse and the 

red ! 
What rage vermilions his expanded wing ? 
Why streams his mane so fiery on the wind 
Back from his staring eyeballs? What should 

make 
His brother's steady candor pulse and throb 
And falter like the light on cavern walls 
Eocked under by the tide ? O never yet 
Did the pale horse seem terrible as now, 
Pawing the margent cliff and snorting down 
Pale fire into the Valley ! . . . Brothers, hail ! 
I fare from outland. Tell me what befalls. 

Angel of the White Sorse. 
He strays too much abroad. He hath not heard. 

32 



THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT 

Angel of the Pale Horse. 
They say that he has lived too much in the sun 
And waxes mortal, mortal. We shall see. 

Angel of the Bed Horse. 
Saw'st thou aught stirring in the valley deeps? 

Raphael. 
Far down below a beast crept wounded hither. 
Why gaze ye on each other thus aghast ! 

Angel of tht Red Horse. 
Cast ye that way — the passes and defiles ! 
This way will I. 

{The Angels of the Horses disappear. ) 

Raphael. 
What news has spread concern 
Even to these marks and purlieus of God's 
dream ! 

Below the sun's pale rim a paleness moves, 
Grows larger, blots the disc with deepening 

light. . . . 
And now above the Valley treads a shape 
Too lordly to be aught but Uriel ! 

33 



THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT 

Poised on a peak he halts to gaze behind ; 
Now wingeth nearer, in the Eagle's track — 

Uriel (approaching}. 
Hail, brother. 

Raphael. 

Hail ! Saw' st thou the fight below! 

Uriel. 

Of what I saw I cannot spell the sense, 
Too darkly hid for me ! 

Raphael. 

Share me at least 
Thy news, though scant. That winged and 

brindled bulk, 
Whence came it and what quarry did it seek ? 
And the great eagle, was it mate or foe? 

Uriel. 
No earthly beast it was, no earthly bird, 
Seeking no earthly quarry. More than this 
I know not how to say, ere I have mused 
Where in the sun's core light and thought are 
one. 

Raphael. 

But yet conjecture clamors at thy heart. 

34 



THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT 

Uriel. 

Thou knowest what whispers are abroad in 

Heaven ; 
How God pines ever for his broken dream, 
Broken by vague division, whence who knows ! 
And pangs of restless love too strong to quench 
Save by the putting of creation forth, — 
Quenched then but for a moment, since the 

worlds 
He made to soothe Him only vex Him more, 
Being compact of passion, violent, 
Exceeding quarrelsome, and in their midst 
Man the arch-troubler. Fainter whispers say 
He ponders how to win his prodigal 
By some extremity to render back 
The heritage abused, to merge again 
Each individual will into His will : 
Till when, his pangs increase. 

Raphael. 

A nine days' tale. 
I hold Him no such weakling ! Yet . . . and 

yet . . . 
I have beheld ... I know not . . . pallor couched 
On brows that wont to beacon ; through the orbs 
Quivers of twilight, hints and flecks of 
change. . . . 

35 



THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT 

We cannot be, we would not be, I deem, 
The same as ere space was, or time began 
To trellis there life's wild and various bloom. 
— We linger. Let me hear. 

Uriel. 

Some things He made 
Out of his wistfulness, his ecstasy, 
And made them lovely fair ; yet other some 
Out of his loathing, out of his remorse, 
Out of chagrin at the antinomy 
Cleaving his nature j these are monstrous shapes, 
Whereof the most abhorred one dwells below 
Within the caves and aged wells of dark 
Toward which this Valley plunges. There it 

waits 
Hoarding its ugly strength till time be full. 

Eapliael. 
How nam'st thou him ? 

Uriel 

The spirits meditative 
Darkly name him : The Worm that Dieth not, — 
Perhaps the scourge reserved for those who prove 
Eebellious in the event, perhaps himself 
Scourge of the Scourger, biding but his hour 

36 



THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT 

To 'venge his niiscreation. So he lies, 

A thing most opposite to spirit- kind, 

Most hated by the Four who guard the Throne, 

Within the viewless panoply of light 

Immediately ministrant. To them, 

But to the Lion and the Eagle most, 

Is given to gaze in the Eternal eyes 

Like hounds about a hunter's knee, that watch 

Each passion written on their master's brow, 

And having read his trouble, steal away 

To taste the troubler's flesh beneath their fangs. 

So stole away the Lion of the Throne, 

The Eagle for his aid. Beneath the moon 

Last night I came upon them stealing down, 

Too eager on the scent to mark my flight. 

Even to the splintered curb of the last profound 

I followed, and thence heard the battle rage 

Bellowed above by the loath elements, 

Till dawn showed in the east, an ashen dawn 

Clotted and drizzled o'er with sullen light. 

Raphael. 
Their hearts were faithful. They were fain to 

save 
The Master from some sad extremity. . . . 
But not in yonder depths, alas, doth lie 
The arch-foe of his peace. Would it were so ! 

37 



THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT 

A monster bred to hatred in the dark. 
Would it were so ! not rather, as we fear, 
Man the uplifted stature, the proud mind, 
The laughter ! 

Uriel. 

Speedily our doubt shall end, 
For not much more delayeth the event. 
— My watch is set within the sun, and thither 
My hour constrains me. 

Raphael. 

Heavenward I. Farewell ! 



38 



ACT L SCENE III. 

A garden in Heaven. The Eagle sits on the Tree 
of Knowledge ; the Lion and the Angel of the White 
Horse rest beneath. 



Angel of the White Horse. 

Deep in the purple umbrage droops the bird, 
His sick eye sealed beneath the weary lid 
Which scarce his right wing's torn and gaping 

gold 
Disfeathered hideth, since long hours ago 
He sidewise tucked his wounded head away, 
Shunning the light's offence ; and through the 

boughs 
Let sink this mighty pinion sinister 
A vast and ruined length, whereof the plumes 
That yesterday planed sunlike o'er the Throne 
Are all blood-rusted now and misted on 
With obscure breathings of a nadir clime. 
Between the Lion's paws a thousand flowers 
Have withered since he laid him groaning down, 
And in uneasy slumber racked with dreams 
Flingeth at whiles a sanguine froth abroad 
To sear what rests of herbage or of bloom 
Unwithered by his breath. They saw me not 

39 



THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT 

Though close I tracked them up the cloudy 

heights, 
Nor once have marked me through the exhausted 

hours 
While here I wait the time to question them. 

Hark ! in their dreams they speak, and in their 

dreams 
Do act again their awful enterprise. 

The Eagle. 
Creep softly, softly ! Heaven's streets are still, 
Each seraph sentry drowseth on his hill, 
The winds of song are folded, and as flowers 
Folded are all the domes and dreaming towers. 
Creep softly, softly ; I am with thee, mate ! 
Softly I soar above the shrouded gate, 
And till thou comest past the warding swords 
Lone in the outer moonlight I will wait. 

The Lion. 

Wing swiftly ! For the walls of chrysopras 
Have melted at my roar to let me pass ; 
But Heaven is up and peers with mazed eyes, 
And wings are weighed to hinder our emprise. 
Wing swiftly, swiftly, down the glooming air, 
Past cloud and precipice and mountain stair, 

40 



THE MASQUE OP JUDGMENT 

For ere another morning drowns the stars 
We must have met the Worm within his lair. 

The Eagle. 
Drear are the depths, O brother, 
Bitter the fight ! 
Vainly we stand by each other. 
Thy might and my might 
Are as straw, in the flame and the smother. 

Angel of the White Horse. 
O ye familiars benedite, 
Who, hidden in the eternal glow, 
Keep guard about the Throne, 
What things were given to your sight 
Ere to the hold of such a foe 
Ye dared to venture down ! 

The Lion (awaking). 
Ages and ages we gazed, 
Stricken at heart and amazed, 
Till the morning look 
From His brow was strook, 
Silver and vair 
In the flame of his hair 
And his lip with anguish crazed. 

Then low I spoke to my mate, 

41 



THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT 

"My heart must unburden its hate. 

I will walk through the pathless woods 

Where the wild stars hatch their broods, 

I will girdle the steppes 

Where the meteor creeps 

Like a slug on the rimy sward. 

Perhaps at the trampled brink 

Where the Bear goes down to drink, 

Perhaps where on the purple leas 

Dance the young Pleiades, 

Somewhere at length 

I shall laugh in my strength 

Spying the Shape abhorred, 

Somewhere at last 

I shall break my fast 

On the flesh of the Foe of the Lord ! » 

The Eagle. 
Wearily thou crept' st back 
Sore from the track ; 

Thy hide was torn and thy tongue was black. 
Long thou did'st slumber and deep. 

The Lion. 

A voice came in my sleep 
Saying, " Why wander so far ! 
Nearhand lieth the earth 

42 



THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT 

Full of rumors of war, 

Of passion and pride no dearth. 

There in his cavern cold 

Lurketh the Dragon old ; 

He lies and pastures, plain to a 

On God's heart, sluggishly, 

As once he sucked of the fruits of gold 

Ages ago, on the Eden tree. 

Angel of the White Ko\ 

Hearken ! A wind walks in the Tree 
Though the lily-heads ore still. 
Prom bough to bough inscrutably 
It feeleth out its will ; 

And now the lea\ i Qg, 

Utter Impulsive 

Xot in the Loosened whirlwinds that invade 

The sun's white core irith 

Not in the wanderii thai sv 

AVith rapine through \\ 

Xot in the wmnn of li. ;i.i 

That drowselh out his term, 

Nay, not in these or ;i ; 

Coiisisteth of Gi ianing and d 

The ineorpi nm. 



THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT 

Though all that He hath made 

Bebels and is exceeding turbulent, 

Though all his loins' increase 

Go after pleasures other than He meant, 

And with excessive claims 

Drain and defile the founts of his content, — 

Yet only one of all the shapes He brought 

Out of the gulfs of thought, 

One only creature of his quickening hands 

Hath from its brow 

With reckless laugh and with reiterate vow 

Stripped clean away all decencies and shames ; 

Till with continual strife 

And divagant demands 

Of separate life, 

The searching and the scornful heart of Man 

God's inmost being maims. 

The Eagle. 
For naught have my wings been broken, 
Vain are the wounds of thy paws ! 
Hark what the Tree hath spoken. 

Angel of the Pale Horse. 
Hush ! For a murmur shakes the bloom 
That once drank Eden dew, 
A shadowed wind like a word of doom 
Darkens the branches through. 



THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT 

The Angel of the Tree. 
Now draweth on the time declared of old 
When He shall make division of the fold, 
Shall winnow out the kernels from the chaff, 
Shall tread his grapes, and in a silver cup 
Chalice the good wine up 
And cast away the pummace and the draflf. 

Too long and much too long 
He hath endured his wrong. 
A little vine of life He set to grow 
Not far off from the footstool of his feet, 
That it might be in spring a pleasant show 
Of budding charities. 

In autumn clothe itself with temperate sweet 
Of love's long-mellowing fruit- 
So mild the angel youth might pluck and eat 
Nor feel the mortal savor trouble shoot 
Across their holy ease. 
But now the vine, 

Grown waste and riotous, has sent its root 
With monstrous loop and twine 
In circles nine times nine 
About the bowels of his holy hill, 
And million- fold its mouth 

lias drunk his songful springs and quenched his 
veins with drouth. 

45 



THE MASQTJE OF JUDGMENT 

Twelve shapes of sculptured dream 

On Heaven's twelve gateways gleam, 

Jasper, chalcedony, and jade, 

Beryl and lazuline ; 

And there-amid the rank leaves of the vine 

Earthy and lush 

At morn with laughter push, 

At evening droop and fade. 

Its carnal fruits are insolently laid, 

With stealth and hasty birth, 

Even in God's streets and in his garden bowers, 

And from the topmost glory of his towers 

Singeth and maketh mirth 

The exultation of its sudden flowers. 

Long and too long hath his compassion shrunk 

From laying of the axe unto the trunk ; 

Nor, though the blade is ground, and kindled 

white 
The furnace, will He quite 
Even now, 

Even now, though day is late, 
Utterly burn and cast into the slough 
The thing He made to love and still is loath to 

hate. 
But first He will put off eternity 
And put on body of their flowering clay, 
That thus brought near He may familiarly 

46 



THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT 

Close in each ear the word of pleading say. 

Each blindling heart that stubborns all astray 

Shall hear Him calling closer than the blood 

That both its ruby gates with tumult fills ; 

And to the wild procession of their wills 

Eaving idolatrous in the sacred wood, 

His voice of poignant love 

Though quiet as the voice of dust to dust 

Shall clearly sound above 

The beaten cymbal and the shrewd-blown shell, 

Saying as soft as rain, 

"The gift I gave I fain would have again, 

Ye have not used it well ! 

Break ye the thyrsus and the phallic sign, 

Put off the ivy and the violet, 

A dearer standard shall before you shine 

And for your lustral foreheads ye shall twine 

A fairer garland yet, 

When the processions mild 

Shall greet you and behold you reconciled 

And sing you home across the deathless asphodel. 

But ye who will not so, 

Take up the phallus and the wreathed snake, 

Let the wine flow, 

And let the mountains echo to your yell. 

Your ways lie by the burning of the lake 

Long kindled for your sake : 

47 



THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT 

Be ye not slow, 
But go 

Urging your panther teams through the wide 
woods of Hell !" 



48 



ACT II. 



Time : during and immediately after the Crucifixion 



ACT II. 

The outlying plains of Heaven. Storm and darkness. 



Raphael. 
But now the air was thick with panic shades 
Who made no answer when I cried to them 
Across the vortices of spiritual dark. 
Upon what stricken plain have I been flung, 
Whose miscreations blot with leaves like hands 
The far horizon light? Some glow-worm ghost 
Flees yonder, pauses, turns, and flees again : 
A woman spirit, by the anguish sweet 
Wakes in me at her anguish. Sister, hear ! 

The Spirit of the Throne-Lamp. 
O Light undimmed, if thou art powerful, 
Speak to the wind ! For see, my wings are 

torn 
And shelter not my lamp : 'tis almost spent. 

Raphael. 
Me too the wind afflicts. Together thus 
Our wings will shield the flame. Already, see, 
It climbs and steadies in the crystal bowl, 
And purges half the terror from thine eyes, 

51 



THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT 

Thou love-lamp of the Lord ! Axe these his 

storms f 
By his allowance are we thus distraught t 

The Spirit of the Lamp. 
His throne is empty and Himself is gone. 

Raphael. 
Child, fright hath crazed thee. Lean thy shak- 
ing breast 
On mine : shut out the terrifying dark. 

The Spirit of the Lamp. 
He died with grieving o'er the world He made. 

Raphael. 
We live in Him ; with Him shall all things die. 
Bright burns thy lamp ; take heart, and tell me 

soon 
What hath befallen in Heaven. 

The Angel of the Lamp. 

I know not well. 
My secret lies upon my heart too long. . . . 

Raphael. 
Nay, tremble not. Eather look out and see 
What presence comes : its influence makes cheer ; 

52 



THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT 

'Twill be some spirit glad and resolute. 

Put by thy wings and look ; my eyes are blind 

Watching the feverous pulsings of thy lamp. 

The Angel of the Lamp. 
'Tis he whose tent is pitched within the sun, 
But hardly glad, no longer resolute. 
Even Uriel's lordly light the wind subdues. 



Hail, Uriel ! 



Raphael. 

The Angel of the Lamp. 
Hail! 

Vrieh 
Hail, brother ! Sister, hail ! 

Raphael. 
Close, lend thy breadth of wing ! Thou art a 

strength. 
Speak, if thou knowest what lias come to pass. 

Uriel. 

Something I know, and hither through the 

storms 
That vex the deeps and on disastrous shores 
Fling all frail stars that coast and merchant 

there, 

53 



THE MASQUE OP JUDGMENT 

I come to learn the sequel — if to learn 
Be mine, in such a matter. 

BapJmel. 

Speak. 

The Angel of the Lamp. 

Oh, speak ! 

Uriel. 
'Neath pleached boughs and vines of ancient fire 
In the white centre of the sun I lay, 
And watched the armies of young seraphim 
Naked at play on the candescent plains, 
When suddenly the skies of flame were rent 
In sunder, and the plain became a sea 
Whereon the whirlwind walked through welter- 
ing lanes 
To the sun's core. With pain I made my way 
? Twixt element and angry element. 
Vast shapes of gathering and dissolving fire 
That seemed as beast and bird, and awful frames 
Of shadow, dubious whether bird or beast 
Or fish or reptile, hidden until now 
In shifting caverns of the photosphere, 
Eose up across my path ; and in their eyes 
Sat fear, and on their limbs astonishment* 

54 



THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT 

At last, long battling and bewildered oft, 
I gained the solar coasts. Wide round I saw 
Each planet passion- changed, each haggard star 
Eeeling from flight and swoon, and the great 

deep 
Toiled like a runner 7 s heart who runs with 

death. 
Calm at confusion's centre stood the Earth, 
A spiritual nimbus round her brow 
Like as a woman angel-visited, 
Sightless and deaf to all things save her swoon 
And her heart's solemn hallelujah. 

The Spirit of the Iximp. 

Oh, 
What hath He sent upon the joyous Earth? 
The Earth that has the blue and little flowers 
Thou brought' st me once to wreath my lamp 

withal, 
Earth-lover ! But they faded very soon, 
And left a nameless hunger in my heart. 
Thy Earth was chosen, Eaphael ! Art thou glad ! 

Raphael. 
Not glad nor sorry, sister, since not yet 
I know the meaning of our brother's words. 
Earth-wandering, and the shows of restless time, 

55 



THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT 

Have weighed the eyelids of my spirit down. 
Speak, Uriel, and speak plain. What followed 
then? 

Uriel. 

That rapt and solemn aspect of the Earth 

Soon drew me to her through the shuddering air ; 

And circling swiftly round her as she went 

I neared the twilight verge that dipped toward 

night. 
Here on % a sunset hill I stayed my wings. 
Babble of people and much soldiery 
Poured thence into their city gates ; the place 
Was steeped in level splendor after storm, 
And like to pillars of advancing fire 
Three trees of crucifixion loomed, whereon 
Three men hung crucified, one beautiful 
Beyond the measure of Man's flowering clay, 
Conspicuous o'er the world placed for a sign. 
Slowly to meet my gaze the dying lids 
Were lifted, and the faint eyes swam on mine — 

Bapliael. 
Nay, sister, sink not ! We are three : be strong. 

The Angel of the Lamp. 
I know whose eyes swam faint on thine ! I know 
The sorrows that He suffered for his world, 

56 



THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT 

Ere ever He put off eternity 

And put on clay, to be by hands of clay 

Hung for a sign ! 

Raphael. 

Above the pausing wind 
Hearken ! a rush of pinions. Who are these 
That put an influence in this bitter air 
Like Spring when she comes galliard from the 
south ! 

Uriel. 
The globe of amber light wherein they fly 
Goes ashen in the flaws. That ship of souls 
Tacks in the wind's teeth and is blown abroad 
Nigh Heaven's last confines. Now it veers 

again, 
And groweth larger : they will pass this way. 

Brother, lift up thy voice and sing to them. 
These be the spirits that within the moon 
Wander the lucent forests ; shy are they 
Amid their wood- thoughts and their shy love- 
thoughts, 
Only by song their minds are quickly swayed. 
Wide has the ocean been for their frail wings, 
And wild the panic that has driven them forth 
From their still lunar isle. Thy song shall be 
A kindly net to snare them as they pass, 

57 



THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT 

Raphael (sings). 
Shore-birds wet with, deep -sea dew, 
Fold your wings and stay your flight ; 
Stay, stay ! 
Long was the way, 

Grieved with wind is your tender light, 
Stay, till our love rekindle you. 

Wood-birds that through lunar glens 

Flood the noon of night with singing, 

Hearken, hearken ! 

Our minds undarken : 

O'er your phosphor forests winging, 

Say, what shadow scared you thence ? 

{The moon-spirits alight in a circle round the three 
angels. ) 

The Spirit of the Lamp. 
How fair they must have been ere yet their 

light 
Was ruined with the wind and flying spume, 
Being so fair, though ruined ! 

First Moon-Spirit. 

Who are ye 
That seem so safe when every shaken world 

58 



THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT 

Voideth its tenantry, and even those stars 
That keep the marches and strongholds of space 
Flee with affrighted eyes down alien deeps, 
Or cling to the necks of comets, whispering 

words 
That stop them in their courses, though they be 
Violent souls and outlaw. 

Uriel. 

We are such 
As share God's sorrow in his evil time, 
And wait the issue of the desperate draught 
He drinks this hour to win surcease of pain. 

Second Moon- Spirit. 
Speak simply to the simple ; make thy words 
Accordant to our minds ; our element 
Is the moon's meek, unintellectual day. 

Uriel. 
You in the moon have felt His pangs more 

near 
Than may the passionate dwellers in quick 

worlds 
Wrapped in their own hot being ; for your 

sphere 
Has cooled the angry metal in its veins, 

59 



THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT 

Its spent volcanoes utter now no more 

Their proud and hasty meanings ; age by age 

Your world tends back to silence, rendering up 

Its selfhood and control into his hands 

Whence it rebelled, like all his prodigals, 

To spend the hoard of fire He dowered them 

with 
Too rashly. So it hangs, a doubtful ground : 
Now, brooded on by powers of heavenly peace, 
It goeth darkling and your hearts are dumb, 
Now, caught within the orbits of desire, 
It gathers ghostly splendor ; in your woods 
Old rites are paid, and o'er your crystal peaks, 
That burn at the heart like genie- haunted 

gems, 
Sweeps revelry so wild that mortal men, 
Shepherds or sailors, gazing half a night, 
Wander at dawn brain-crazed. 

Third Moon-SpiHt. 

Angel, we wait, 
We wait with trembling till thy lips declare 
This present hour's disaster. Whose the arm 
That broke our steppes in twain, and from the 

roots 
Of cloven hills haled shapes of former men 
And frames of monstrous ravin, ages dead! 

60 



THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT 

Whose mouth was set against the moon-children, 
To blow their sheeny pleasances to dust 
And scare them from their world ? 

What plains are these 
Whose spiritual pulse of light and dark 
Throbs as if hope and terror struggled there t 

Uriel. 
These are the plains of heaven, least create 
Of God's creation, nearest to his hand 
When He would discreate, as now perchance, 
The deeps that teem with rebel energies 
Wanton, unteachable, intolerable, 
Whereof the soul of man, though meant to be 
His dearest pride and joy, is frowardest 
And first to vex him : were Man's will subdued, 
The rest beneath his banners soon would swarm. 
Long hath He warned and pleaded, but to-day 
With a most searching bosom- whisper pleads ; 
For in their likeness clad He gives Himself 
To die that they may live, accepting Him, 
Or, still rejecting, and preferring still 
Their own unto his pleasure, may be cast 
To outer darkness and the second death. 
These storms and perturbations are his throes, 
And here we wait until He reassume 
His attributes and kingdom. 

61 



THE MASQUE OP JUDGMENT 

The Angel of the Lamp. 

Will He come ! 
And will the ancient peace be ours again ? 
Speak, brother, will it be ? 

Uriel. 

Hope still is ours. 

Tremble no more, sweet Flame ! Good hope is 

ours. 

The Angel of the Lamp. 

My secret lies upon my heart too long ! 
Since first the trumpet told of Time begun, 
And in the seven bowls the seven flames, 
So white before and still, a patient praise, 
Leaped up in restless colours, fear hath stood 
A whispering eighth among the sisters seven, 
A thin small voice singing above our songs, 
A hush beneath our hush. Each side the throne 
The mystic olive trees began to blow, 
And on the candlesticks that burn beneath 
Dropped dying bloom and fruitage mortal ripe. 
When evening spread upon the holy hill 
Its excellence of peace, small restless wings, 
To Heaven unnative, fluttered round our lamps, 
Forever circling nearer till they threw 
Into the flame their lives of longing dust, 
And though we plucked the char out hastily 

62 



THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT 

A climbing rust had dulled our torch of praise. 
Nay, where the very breast of God should be, 
Forever panoplied with viewless light, 
Gnawed darkness like a worm, and when this 

wind 
That never came till now, blew wide and thin 
The splendor of the Throne-stead — hush, bend 

close ! — 
His eyes were old with pain. Then all at once — 

brothers, is it hours or aeons since ? — 
Intolerable lambence lit the air ; 

The sea of glass whereon the nations stand 
At morn to carol, curdled red as blood, 
And rolled a moaning billow to the shore ; 
The Eagle screamed ; upon the tabled gem 
Where was the footstool of God's feet, lay prone 
The Lion's whining muzzle ; and the Calf 
Bleated beneath his six- times- folded wing. 
My sister lamps were quenched, but ere I fled 

1 crept up past the Lion's awful paws, 

Up past the shrouding light, and saw His place 
Was empty. ... Is it hours or aeons since? 
I found the shadowed fields about me, grey 
Each hearted amaranth and asphodel, 
The living forests with their veins of light 
Looped thickly, and the burning flowers between, 
The living waters, and the lily souls 

63 



THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT 

Along the waters — all a stricken grey ! 
Where'er I fled or turned it still pursued — 
That Nothingness that sat upon the Throne ; 
And now it waits to seize me — yonder, here ! 

Uriel. 
Hush, be of better comfort. Through the plain 
Auroral pallors wake the asphodels ; 
The wind at last is still ; and eastward far 
Beyond the friths and islands of that sea 
Which spreads before His dwelling in the Mount, 
Behold, beginning glories star the dusk, 
As if the clouds rolled burning from the throne, 
To show us signs and wonders risen there. 
And hark ! the happy presage of keen wings 
Ingathering from the corners of the winds ; 
Large light, and silvery calls and far replies, 
And deeps of song that call unto the deeps. 

Raphael. 
His agony is done : a little while 
He tarries, but He surely comes again 
Even though but for a little. 

The Spirit of the Lamp. 

Let us join 
These hasting companies whose steady flight 

64 



THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT 

Goes tempered to all manner instruments 
Borne in tlieir midst by hidden taborists, 
Lute-players, and them that pluck the dul- 
cimer — 
All sweet musicians ! Surely these go in 
Unto some holy matter. 

Raphael. 

Surely. Come ! 



65 



ACT III. 



Time : Scene I. before dawn, Scene II. after sunset, 
of the Day of fudgment 



ACT III. SCENE L 

A peak above the Valley of the Judgment Be- 
twee* midnight and damn. 



Baphael. 

Alas, on this lone height my pinions fail, 
And half my dreaming world unvisited ! 
As a sick woman, who, when morning glooms 
Must leave for aye the house where she was 

wed, 
Yearns to behold the thrice- familiar rooms, 
And rises trembling, and with watch-lamp 

goes 
From chamber unto chamber, stopping now 
To muse upon her dead child's pictured brow, 
And now to dream of little merriments 
Enacted, and of trivial dear events, 
Until her weakness grows 
Upon her, and she sinks and cannot rise, — 
So, since upon the sad and prescient skies 
The darkness of this ultimate night was shed, 
My feet from haunted place to haunted place 
Of my familiar earth have kept their pace : 
Alas, that ere the half be mused upon, 
And while the coming up of dreadful day 

69 



THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT 

Is still an hour away 

My wing is broken, and my strength is gone ! 

Star after star goes out above the peak, 
And only from the morning star is shed 
Keen influence. Great star ! He is not weak, 
His pinions fail not ; for he never quaffed 
This frail and fiery air that mortals drink : 
He has not heard when little children laughed ; 
He has not watched old pensioners break their 

bread ; 
To woman's lips he never held the draught 
Of anguish, that a man-child might be born ; 
The May woods never saw him hiding there 
His wings and flaming hair 
To watch the young men pluck the budded 

thorn ; 
Nor has his mouth put off its seraph scorn 
To hang with startled cry 
Of grievous inquiry 
Above the stoic forehead of the dead. 

O heart of man, how I have loved thee ! 
Hidden in sunlight what sweet hours were mine 
Of lover-like espial upon thine j 
Thrilled with thy shadowy fears, half-guessing 
The hope that lit thy veins like wine, 

70 



THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT 

Musing why this was bane and that thy blessing, 
My angel-ichor moved by all that moved thee ; 
Though oft the meanings of thy joy and woe 
Were hid, were hard to know ; 
For deep beneath the clear crystalline waters 
That feed the hearts of Heaven's sons and daugh- 
ters, 
The roots of thy life go. 
O Dreamer ! O Desirer ! Goer down 
Unto untravelled seas in untried ships ! 
O crusher of the unimagined grape 
On unconceived lips ! 
O player upon a lordly instrument 
No man or god hath had in mind to invent ; 
O cunning how to shape 
Effulgent Heaven and scoop out bitter Hell 
From the little shine and saltness of a tear ; 
Sieger and harrier, 

Beyond the moon, of thine own builded town, 
Each morning won, each eve impregnable, 
Each noon evanished sheer ! 

Thou fiery essence in a vase of fire ! 

What quarry gathered and packed down the clay 

To make this delicate vessel of desire ? 

Who digged it ? In what mortar did he bray I 

Whose wistful hand did lead 

71 



THE MASQUE OP JUDGMENT 

All round the lyric brede 1 

Who tinted it, and burned the dross away t 

"He, He," (doth some one say ?) 

u Whose mallet- arm is lift and knitted hard 

To break it into shard ! " 

Were that the Maker's way ? 

Who brings to being aught, 

Love is his skill untaught, 

Love is his ore, his furnace, and his tool ; 

Who makes, destroyeth not, 

But much is dashed in pieces by the fool. 

straggler in the mesh 
Of spirit and of flesh 

Some subtle hand hath tied to make thee Man, 
That now is unto thee a wide domain 
To laugh and love and dare in for a span, 
And straightway is a prison-house of pain, 
A den of loathing, and a violent place, 
A hold for unclean wing and cruel face 
That mock the seared heart and darkened brain, - 
My bosom yearns above thee at the end, 
Thinking of all thy gladness, all thy woe ; 
Whoever is thy foe, 

1 am thy friend, thy friend ! 

As thou hast striven, I strove to comprehend 
The piteous sundering set betwixt the zenith 

72 



THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT 

And nadir of thy fates, 

Whose life doth serious message send 

To moon and stars, anon itself demeaneth 

Below the brute estates. 

Wild heart, that through the steepening arcs art 

whirled 
To a bright master- world, 
And in a trice must blindly backward hark 
To the subterrene dark, 
Deem not that mighty gamut- frame was set 
For wanton finger-fret ! 
No empty-hearted gymnast of the strings 
Gave the wild treble wings, 
Or flung the shuddering bass from hell's last 

parapet. 
Though now the Master sad 
With vehemence shall break thee, 
Not lightly did He make thee, 
That morning when his heart was music-mad : 
Lovely importings then his looks and gestures 

had. 

Whatever conieth with to-morrow's light, 

Oh, deem not that in idlesse or in spite 

The strong knot of thy fate 

Was woven so implicate, 

Or that a jester put thee in that plight. 

73 



THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT 

Darkly, but oh, for good, for good, 

The spirit infinite 

Was throned upon the perishable blood ; 

To moan and to be abject at the neap, 

To ride portentous on the shrieking scud 

Of the aroused flood, 

And halcyon hours to preen and prate in the boon 

Tropical afternoon. 

Not in vain, not in vain, 

The spirit hath its sanguine stain, 

And from its senses five doth peer 

As a fawn from the green windows of a wood ; 

Slave of the panic woodland fear, 

Boon-fellow in the game of blood and lust 

That fills with tragic mirth the woodland year, 

Searched with starry agonies 

Through the breast and through the reins, 

Maddened and led by lone moon- wandering cries. 

Dust unto dust complains, 

Dust laugheth out to dust, 

Sod unto sod moves fellowship, 

And the soul utters, as she must, 

Her meanings with a loose and carnal lip ; 

But deep in her ambiguous eyes 

Forever shine and slip 

Quenchless expectancies, 

74 



THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT 
And in a fax- off day she seems to put her trust. 

O Morning Star ! that dost arise 
Haughtily now from off thy flaming throne, 
And standest in thy wings' outspreaded zone, 
With hand uplift and intense vision glad, 
More kindling while thy brother planets fade, — 
Wilt thou, the seldom-speaker, speak and say 
If this, if this be then the far-off day 
When God shall give the substance for the shade ? 
When Man shall wake, and be no more adrad 
To lose the precious dream he dreamed he had, 
And the long groping of his heart be stayed ? 

He answers not ; the globed light he wean 
Largens and largens like a wondrous flower, 
And in the midst his wavering radiance fades. 
Behold, upon the waters, them that be 
Above the heavens, how the lily light 
Blooms mystical and vast ! till all the stars 
And all the gathered clouds that wait the day 
Are blotted by its rondure. Dimly grows 
From height to depth of that magnificence 
A splendor sad that taketh feature on. . . . 
Lo ! where God's body hangs upon the cross, 
Drooping from out yon skiey Golgotha 
Above the wills and passions of the world ! 

75 



THE MASQUE OP JUDGMENT 

O doomed, rejected world, awake ! awake ! 

See where He droopeth white and pitiful ! 

Behold, his drooping brow is pitiful ! 

Cry unto Him for pity. Climb, oh, haste, 

Climb swiftly up yon skiey Golgotha 

To where his feet are wounded ! Even now 

He must have pity on his childish ones ; 

He knoweth, He remembereth they are dust ! 

Earth slumbers ; and the freshening winds begin 

To blow from out the unuprisen east ; 

Yet still abides that awful Eidolon 

Large on the face of Heaven, and its light 

Is as the patience of a thousand moons 

Upon the peaks and gorges of the vale. 

Now on that giant forehead slowly dawns 

Again the star, the bright, the morning star ; 

Amid the changeful lampings of his orb 

The Angel stands, with keen out-spreaded wings, 

And lifted hand and intense vision glad, 

As when he led his brother orbs in song. 

But yet no word nor any breath of song 

Begins upon the region silences : 

All's hushed as ere the first-created throat 

Was vocal. 

Now remoter wonders wake, 
Impatient glories gather and transpeer 

76 



THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT 

That sky-suspended Image. Three by three 

The beryl gates, the gates of chrysoprase, 

And those that are a very perfect pearl 

Open, and all the citadel of God 

Even to the bright acropolis thereof, 

The temple of the ark of the covenant, 

Lies open, steeped in wroth light from the 

Throne ; 
And all the heavenly folk are busy there. 



77 



ACT III. SCENE II. 

A peak above the Valley of the Judgment. Twilight. 

Michael. 
God's vengeance is full wrought, unless this 

form 
That labors from the dark mists of the Vale 
Be one whose strength has overlived our wrath. 
And the last hunger of whose heart shall be 
To creep from out that mass of death, and wait 
High on these ruined hills for death to come 
At nightfall, when the last strong soul must 

die. 
Nay, 'tis no mortal creature, though he wears 
A fallen unhappy splendor, and his wings, 
All eyed and irised like the gladdest ones 
That glimmer in the pageantry of Heaven, 
Are folded sadly o'er his downcast eyes 
As now he sits and dreams. 'Tis Eaphael. 

{Michael descends. ) 

"Why sitteth Eaphael disconsolate 
After the manifest glories of this day 1 

Eaphael. 
The rest may keep the glory. 

78 



THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT 

Michael. 

Wilt thou share 
The love-feast of the saved in Heaven to-night 
With hidden traitorous thoughts clouding thy 
heart ? 

Raphael. 

Never again ! Never again for me ! 

Never again the lily souls that live 

Along the niargent of the streams, shall grow 

More candid at my coming. Never more 

God's birds above the bearers of the Ark 

Shall make a wood of implicated wing 

Swept by the wind of slow ecstatic son--. 

Thy youths shall hold their summer oenacles ; 

I am not of their fellowship, it seems. 

God's ancient peace shall feed them, as it feeds 

These yet uplifted hills. I would I knew 

Where bubbled that insistent spring. To drink 

Deep, and forget what I have seen to-day ! 

Michael. 

What thou hast seen? The splendor of his 

power 
Sent forth against the wicked ; his right arm 
Cleaving unbearable glories, lifted high 
To hurl his chivalry down slopes of flame 

79 



THE MASQUE OP JUDGMENT 

With wheels and tramplings ; the wide thresh- 
ing-floor 
Become a furnace ; drop by anguished drop 
The oozing of the wine-press of his wrath ; 
The gross pulp cumbering the floor of the world, 
The little priceless liquor chaliced up, 
Borne back 'mid plaining silver and sweet throats 
For the Spirit's earliest house-gift to the Bride ! 
Thou would' st forget this gladly, Eaphael? 

Eaphael. 
Yes, yes ; right gladly. 

Michael. 

Yonder where the fight 
Flung its main sea of blood and broken souls 
Into the nether dark, I saw a youth 
Cling for a moment to a jutting rock 
And gaze back at the angel shapes that rode 
The neck of the avalanche ; between the wings 
Of the pale horse and the red his vision pierced, 
Between the ranks of spectral charioteers, 
Supernal arms and banners prone for speed, 
Up to the central menace of the Hand 
That launched that bulk of ruin ; and I saw 
A light of mighty pleasure fill his eyes 
At all that harness and despatch of war 

80 



THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT 

Storming aslope. He laughed defiance back 

Ere down cascades of blood and fire was flung 

His body indistinguishably damned. 

How should this puny valor rise in glee 

To greet the power that crushed it, and thy heart, 

Angelically dowered, stand listless by ! 

Raphael. 
Perhaps for thinking on another sight. 
After thy chivalry passed down and left 
The valley- trough cumbered and heaped with 

death, 
A broken girl o'er-lived to find the breast 
Her arms had clung to in the awful fall 
Strange, alien, not her lover's boyish shape 
She deemed she held, but gross with years and 

sins. 
Her changed eyes heavily a moment roamed. 
Then settled back on his, the darkened mate 
Whom chance had flung her at the hour extreme 
In scornful bridals. From his brow she drew 
The war-worn locks, and laid her kisses there 
Unutterable with life's Extreme tenderness. 

Hark ! where the last of those redeemed go by, 
Companioned of the hasting paranymphs 
Who hear afar the Spirit and the Bride 

81 



THE MASQUE OP JUDGMENT 

Say "Conie," and see the nuptial torch alight 
Ere they have put their saffron vesture on, — 
Too eager for their goal to join the song 
Those throats redeemed raise, save that their 

hearts 
Throb rhythmic with it, systole dim 
And bright diastole, with wax and wane 
Of spirit-splendor pulsing to the tune. 

Redeemed Spirits (sing, as they fly past below). 

In the wilds of life astray, 
Held far from our delight, 
Following the cloud by day 
And the fire by night, 
Came we a desert way. 
O Lord, with apples feed us, 
With flagons stay ! 
By Thy still waters lead us ! 

As bird torn from the breast 
Of mother- cherishings, 
Far from the swaying nest 
Dies for the mother wings, 
So did the birth-hour wrest 
From Thy sweet will and word 
Our souls distressed. 
Open Thy breast, thou Bird ! 

82 



THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT 

Raphael. 

Another neareth, chill upon the wind ; 
Wan fire-flakes stain the clustering spires of cliff, 
From ledge to shoulder hapless echo clings 
And falters up. 

Michael. 
The pale one's homing-song ! 
To-day he makes good harvest, and his voice 
Has autumn meanings ; jealously and late 
His steed foregoes the trampled threshing-stead. 

Raphael. 
Terrible angel ! Never until now 
Have I beheld his features through the veil 
Of pallor that enwrapped them ; now at last 
Their terror is distinct, for triumph now 
And large appeasement lights them visibly, 
As o'er his horse's neck he strains for speed. 

Michael. 
One flieth with him, rosy-lit within. 

Raphael. 
Not as the battailous breathing of thy mates 
Enrubies them : more vesperine and sad. 
' Twill be the lordly light of Uriel, dimmed. 
Hail, Uriel ! Quench thy speed. 

83 



THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT 

The Angel of the Pale Horse (flying). 

Why tarry now ? 
God's acts are throughly complished : Heaven 

stays 
Till all her sons be gathered. 

(Flies past.) 

Uriel (alighting). 

Here I wait 
To see the swift reprisals Man shall take. 

Michael. 
Blaspheme not, lest I hurl thee down to swell 
The carrion sin that Eaphael mourns above ! 

Raphael. 
Uriel's place is there, by those pale heads, 
Those sightless eyes with awful question changed, 
Those desperate broken hands cheated in death 
With poor embraces chance and alien. 
Not Uriel's only, — mine, and thine, and theirs 
Thy warrior mates, and chiefly His whose breast 
Bathed in some dawn's bright urge and wistful - 

ness 
Put out this lovely fruitage, this sweet vine 
Of man the leaf and maid the honeyed flower 
In mystic alternation, and when noon 
Spread clamor in the pulses of the vine, 

84 



THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT 

Was pined and plucked it up ! Not so shall one 
Deal with another's, much less with his own. 

Michael. 
For sins not to be borne he cut them off. 
Murders, adulteries, and acts unclean, 
Idolatries, and broken covenants, 
Violent hearts and unconsidering tongues. 

Uriel. 
The violence and the unclean acts were his ; 
Unto Himself himself brake covenant ; 
Before the monstrous fancies of his heart 
His heart made heathen mummery and song. 
Wherefore to-day himself He punishes. 

Michael. 
Thy mouth uttereth darkness. Is all dream f 
Human and heavenly deed unmeaning both ? 

Raphael (to Uriel). 
Brother, thou art all wisdom, as I know 
And still have proved rejoicingly, but now 
Thy word indeed is difficult and dark. 
Take not away Man's ancient dignity, 
The privilege and power to elect his ways, 
His kingly self-possession. Level not 

85 



THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT 

The head that lies too low to-day. Snatch not 
From brows abased the crown of personal will 
Which made them noble, though it brought 

them down, 
Being worn too carelessly, too like a wreath 
Of ivy or poppies meant for holiday. 
Man's agonies and ecstasies obscure 
Were more than shadow-show ! Not all in vain 
His groping toward some quaint imagined good, 
His blood shed for a scruple, his low days 
Winged and illumined with long-suffering love ! 

Uriel. 
Nay, not in vain were these, though otherwise 
Bound with the sum of things than unto Man 
Seemed likely, wearing that glad wreath he wore, 
And going after good the headstrong way. 

Raphael. 
We wait to hear this riddling talk made plain. 

Uriel. 
Truth is not soon made plain, nor in a breath 
Fluently solved while the chance listener waits, 
Nor by the elemental wrestling mind 
Wrung from the rock with sobs. Myself have 
held, 

86 



THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT 

Where in the sun's core light and thought are 

one, 
iEons of question, and am darkling still. 

Baphael. 
Speak, brother, though thy words be hard and 

scant. 
The candle flame goes far a moonless night. 

Uriel. 
The worlds and all their tenantry are Him, 
Even to the utmost archipelagoes 
Gazed at by maritime angels ere they veer 
Homeward, awestruck by omens and sea-signs 
Known to no pilot of them, and far-off 
Watch the scared islanders beside the straits, — 
All these, and whatso lies beyond our hail, 
Are effluence of the life that moves in Him, 
Thought of his brain, wish of his working 

blood : 
Yet every separate creature of his thought 
Hath separate claims and separate potencies. 
Oh, not a sparrow falleth to the ground 
But He regardeth it ! Since ere it fell 
A little gladness died away in Him. 
And not a creature sinneth but He weeps 
His own sin with his creature's — fourfold pain, 

87 



THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT 

Since god and creature, false each to itself, 
Was fake each, to the other. Not a heart 
O'ercometh evil and mounts up to good, 
But He o'ercometh and is lifted too. 
Each life of clay that flowered in fragrant deed, 
Each grass-blade that grew willingly, each bird 
That through the churlish weather hoarded song, 
Not only worked its own salvation out 
But helped Him in his old struggle with him- 
self— 
Or might have helped — or might have helped, 
it seems. . . . 

Eaphael. 
Yet did not, thy disconsolate ending says. 

Uriel. 
Who shall dispute finalities with Him 1 
Not Uriel. But as far as Uriel sees, 
Salvation lies annulled in yonder Vale 
And prone are God's true helpers. 

Michael. „. - - . 

Clay of clay ! 

Wassailers, fleshlings, quarrel-mongers, thieves 

Of pleasure, plighters of unholy troth, 

Mimes, gypsies, idol-breakers, idol-smiths, 

Dervishing fantasists — most likely help ! 

88 



THE MASQUE OP JUDGMENT 

Uriel. 

Unlikely : yet the marrow of his bones ; 

Heat of the breath of his mouth ; corpuscles red 

Energic in his veins, loud gainsayers 

Of death's insinuating whisper, "Peace!" . . . 

Before the Heavens were spread, or He himself 

Eose from his changeless and unpictured dream, 

These stirred in Him, demanding to be dowered 

With individual shape and destiny, — 

Each one a soul, yet each incorporate 

With his great soul, which to far happy ends 

Should henceforth in a million shapes of will 

Immensely groan and travail, not with tears 

Alone, but laughter, with singing as with sobs. 

Oh, many a golden station on that march 

Lie backward of us ! when the armed worlds 

Broke leaguer round some conquered capital, 

And in the pleasure-places of its kings 

Sat down to feast, the unhelmed gleemen 

chanting 
Victory past and victory to come. 
Let me not darken thought with imagery ! 
Still the naked word escapes me, being too vast, 
Too simple, for our little pictured speech. 
This chiefly I would say : the restless joy 
Which called God from his sleep and bade his 

hand 

89 



THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT 

Depict much life and language on the dark. 

Had other aims and meanings than are writ 

In yonder Valley for an epilogue. 

Man's violence was earnest of his strength, 

His sin a heady overflow, dynamic 

Unto all lovely uses, to be curbed 

And sweetened, never broken with the rod ! 

Raphael. 
Why did He quench their passion? I have 

walked 
The rings of planets where strange- coloured 

moons 
Hung thick as dew, in ocean orchards feared 
The glaucous tremble of the living boughs 
Whose fruit hath eyes and purpose ; but no- 
where 
Found any law but this : Passion is power, 
And, kindly tempered, saves. All things declare 
Struggle hath deeper peace than sleep can bring : 
The restlessness that put creation forth 
Impure and violent, held holier calm 
Than that Nirvana whence it wakened Him. 

Uriel. 
This day declares He deemeth otherwise. 
The Shining Wrestler, tired of strife, hath slain 

90 



THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT 

The dark antagonist whose enmity 
Gave Him rejoicing sinews ; but of Him 
His foe was flesh of flesh and bone of bone ; 
With suicidal hand He smote him down : 
Soon we shall feel His lethal pangs begin. „ 

Raphael. 
Fiercer than those that clove thy burning realms 
And sent grey winds to waste the plains of 

Heaven 
When on the Cross He sought to purchase peace 
And lure his wayward world back to His hand ! 

Michael. 
His lightning dry thy tongue ! Why should our 

minds 
Peer and conjecture of the danger past I 
Thou knowest what glory followed. 

Raphael. 

Yes, I know. 

The clouds at last rolled burning from the Throne 

And let us see the risen wonders there. 

Again I hear the gathering psalmody 

Chant out the clement tale — eternal God 

Made clay, by hands of clay unto the Cross 

Hung for a sign, that who beholding Him 

Should find Him very God, might dwell with us 

91 



THE MASQUE OP JUDGMENT 

In endless light and life. Again I hear 
The deep consenting chorus mount and merge 
The wayward crests of treble into one ; 
But still between the calling deeps of song 
Vague and unacquiescent hung my heart, 
Conning the burden wistfully anew 
In hopes to find the joy my comrades found 
Hid in the dubious notes. Vague hung my heart, 
Wistful as morning boughs that watch the moon, 
Not strong as now when I have seen all clear 
And o'er the ashes of the world declare — 
Listen ! Are there not voices in the Vale ? 

Michael. 
They talk together. Some die not till dark. 

Raphael. 
Aye, until dark ! 'Twill be a starless night. 



92 



ACT IV. 



Time : evening of the Day of "Judgment 



ACT IV. 

A rock in the Valley of the Judgment; about the 
roclc } and filling the whole trough of the valley, lie 
the bodies of the lost. Twilight. 

Raphael. 
My lot is cast with these : I watch to-night 
Here islanded in death. Say me not nay : 
Till from the last lip anguish is unwreathed, 
From the last brow the frown of horror fades, 
Here I must sit, witness and comforter 
If any more conspicuous strengths survive 
To mutter or make signal in the dusk. 

Michael. 
Nay, brother, stay not. Though thy words are 

calm, 
Thy desperate eyes betray thee ; thou resolvest 
Some sudden irremediable thing. 
The past is done, and, whether well or ill, 
Kecessitously. Put on that robe of song 
Woven of youngest light and over-runed 
With flickerings of the golden elder speech, 
Wherein thou led'st the lily souls along 
Choregic o'er the unclouded psalmody 
And wert so starry long agone ! Arise ! 

95 



THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT 

My soul is heavy at thee. Thou art wan ; 
Thine eyes are dull yet wild, even as these 
"Who lie involved and heaped along the Vale 
Seeming in death to threaten and to rave. 
Arise and come away ! Why tarry here 
To mourn above these outcast, since the fan 
Hath winnowed them and left no righteous one % 
Eather arise, make glad thy countenance, 
And through the courts of day let herald throats 
Softly declare thy coming, virgin hands, 
From that oraculous tree whose leaves are 

tongues, 
Laurel thee best of Heaven's lutanists 
And seat thee at the minstrel-hand of God. 

Baphael. 
You urge me well. I think my songs to-night 
Would cheer their festivals : I have a theme 
Of very present gladness, deeply conned. 
But if amid the gratulating chant, 
If through the dances orbed and interorbed 
Furnished with solemn symbol and device, 
Perchance there stole a quite unfurnished shape 
Nakedly risen from this company ? 
Holding up horrible accusing hands 
Against the nuptial light? That were scarce 
well. 

96 



THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT 

I fear my lute would glance and jangle off 
To themes as good unsung. Hark ! 

Michael. ,__ 

Twas a voice, 

Not distant. 

Raphael. 

Nay, 'tis yonder, — he who lies 
Half lifted from the jetsam of this sea 
Across that ragged reef. Another, hush ! 
A woman's voice, was't not! And see, below — 
That aged throat would fain articulate. . . . 
They taste sweet speech ere the long silence 
comes. 

A Youth 7 s Voice. 

Do any live but me f Do any wake to hear 
A word spoke in the dark before I die ! 

An Old Man. 
An old and wakeful spirit rests thee near. 

A Young Woman. 
Long had I lain asleep, but wakened at thy cry. 

Youth. 

Not all discourteous is the Conqueror's heart, 
Since now of that good strength I wore at noon 
Ebbs back a little part. 

97 



THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT 

Old Man. 

Enough to syllable thy soul's young scorn, 

Though all unripe, unwise ; 

And haply rouse some one of these that lie 

Fixing the dark with undivining eyes 

Of human wit and seemliness forlorn, 

To speak their separate word or unto thine reply. 

Youth. 

A song of scorn I minded to have sung, 

But all the words are faded from my tongue. 

Mysteriously withdrawn, 

Out of this desolation I am gone 

Aloft into the light of other days. 

My heart runs naked in the wind, more fleet 

Than are my flying feet, 

Abo to the misty foss and up the mountain lawn 

To seek the place of Morning where she stays. 

The silver summits held across the dawn 

By some gigantic arm, like wrought candelabras, 

Kindle their wicks of praise 

To light the temple builded not with hands 

Above the prostrate lands, 

And the religious winds, song-stoled, 

Pacing the mighty nave 

Fill azure dome and star-held architrave 

With hymns unto the gods that grow not old, — 

98 



THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT 

Lords of the joy of life made known 

Not unto gods alone, 

But perfectly to man and beast and stone, 

And by the atomies with rapture shared, 

But ne'er by poet's golden mouth 

Nor by the west wind singing to the south 

Fitly declared. 

Oh, for a voice 

Here in the doors of death 

To speak the praise of life, existence mere, 

The simple come and go of natural breath, 

And habitation of the body's house with its five 

windows clear ! 
O souls defeated, broken, and undone, 
Eejoice with me, rejoice 
That we have walked beneath the moon and 

sun 
Not churlishly, nor slanderous of the bliss ; 
But rather leaving this 
To the many prophets strict and sedulous 
Of that sad-spoken god 

Who now hath conquered and is surely king, 
Have given our lips for life to closely kiss, 
Have heard the sweet persuasion of the sod 
And been heart- credulous 
To trust the signs and whispers of the spring. 

99 



THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT 

Second Youth. 

Various the reasons why we could not pay 

The price exacted from us ! 

My ear, though fain, I might have turned away 

From spring's love-startled promise, 

I might have given up the glorious sea 

And the majestic mountains might for me 

Have ceased to be ; 

God, with one sudden rinsing of his hand, 

Might have wiped bare 

The earth-ball of its deeds and pageantries, 

Tea, even of light and air, 

That on the stark circumference I might stand 

And choose deliberately, unvexed of these, 

Between my will and his. 

Then I had said, with cheerful voice and 

strong, 
Somewhat dismayed, yet with a cheerful voice, 
"This many days, Lord, I have thought it 

long 
Till I could put away creation's noise, 
The tragic streets, the poignant drip of rains, 
But chiefly the loud speaking in my veins 
Concerning this and that desirable. 
Now you have put me in a quiet place, 
Take but away your too expectant face, 
And all shall then be well. 

100 



THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT 

Then I can ponder, as I meant to do 

And as I singly long since thought was mine, 

The mysteries divine ; 

Make quiet proof of you 

If you be verily my lord or no, 

And, having found you to be truly so, 

Shall understand for sooth, 

That down the eternities I may launch my 

mind 
Not as a tame hawk, haggard down the wind, 
AYhom huntsman's cry pursueth, 
But as an eagle without bell or jess, 
Obedient alone to his soul's lordliness. 

Third Youth. 
Better with captives in the slaver's pen 
Hear women sob, and sit with cursing men, 
Yea, better here among these writhen lips, 
Than pluck out from the blood its old compan- 
ionships. 
If God had set me for one hour alone, 
Apart from clash of sword 
And trumpet-pealed word, 
I think I should have fled unto his throne. 
But always ere the dayspring took the sky, 
Somewhere the silver trumpets were aery, — 
Sweet, high, oh, high and sweet ! 

101 



THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT 

What voice could summon so but the soul's 

Paraclete? 
Whom should such voices call but me, to dare 

and die f 
O ye asleep here in the eyrie town, 
Ye mothers, babes, and maids, and aged men, 
The plain is full of foemen ! Turn again — 
Sleep sound, or waken half 
Only to hear our happy bugles laugh 
Lovely defiance down, 
As through the steep 
Grey streets we sweep, 
Each horse and man a ribbed fan to scatter all 

that chaff ! 

How from the lance-shock and the griding 

sword 
Untwine the still small accents of the Lord ! 
How hear the Prince of Peace and Lord of 

Hosts 
Speak from the zenith 'mid his marshalled 

ghosts, 
" Vengeance is mine, I will repay ; 
Cease thou and come away ! " 
Or having seen and harkened, how refrain 
From crying, heart and brain, 
"So, Lord, Thou say est it, Thine — 

102 



THE MASQUE OP JUDGMENT 

But also mine, ah surely also mine ! 

Else why and for what good 

This strength of arm my father got for me 

By perfect chastity, 

This glorious anger poured into my blood 

Out of my mother's depths of ardency ? 

A Confused Voice. 

Not very long to-day 

Thy arm held back the mischief of the tide ! 

Thou could' st not check the play 

Of scythes, the awful chariots beside ! 

Thy blood has ebbed a little from its pride. 

A GirVs Voice. 
I waited patiently and thought to hear 
The secret reason dark, 
The secret reason dark and dear 
Why none of us had heart to mark 
The pale evangel whispering from the sphere. 
For oft the moon between the garden boughs 
Her looks of summer longing would efface, 
And come to be a halo round the brows 
Of Him who died to give the sinner grace, 
Now saddening o'er His purchase from that 

place. 
And oft at dawn I heard the Sons of Morning 

103 



THE MASQUE OP JUDGMENT 

Silvered with lovely menace fill the sky, 
And heard their solemn lips deliver warning 
What time the central singer lifted high, 
In the deep hush twixt ode and palinode, 
The sangrael of the sun, brimmed with redeem- 
ing blood. 
But how might I attend the minatory 
Voices of many angels breathing doom, 
When from the window of the little room 
My love's face had not faded, and the story 
His wakeful mouth had whispered in the gloom 
Spake in my pulses yet ? And how at evening 

turn 
To feel those sad eyes down the moonlight yearn, 
When mouth to mouth and breast to aching 

breast 
I held my lover close, and by his nest 
The nightingale, scarce master of his mood, 
Now after faint essay 
And amorous dim delay 

Suddenly steeped his heart in song's mad pleni- 
tude? 

A Woman's Voice. 

What unripe girl is this who maketh bold 
To speak for lovers at the extreme hour, 
Yet fancy-paints the flower ? 
Yet hides with image-gilt the naked gold? 

104 



THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT 

sisters, brothers, help me to arise ! 

Of God's two-horned throne I will lay hold 
And let Him see my eyes ; 
That He may understand what love can be, 
And raise his curse, and set his children free. 

Another Woman 1 s Voice. 
My life was a rank venomed weed 
And hers, I think, a flower ; 
But my harsh voice shall have a power 
Fiercer than hers to plead. 
About His knees with curses I will cling, 
My veins I will break open, till He see 
The barb of the intolerable sting, 
The tongues of the immitigable fire 
He planted there to fret and fumble through me, 
To craze and to undo me, 
Till on the cruel altars where He threw me 

1 slew my heart's desire ! 

Old Man. 
Of double fetters be not fain, my child, 
To these thou wearest be thou reconciled. 
Spread not before his dark averted gaze 
(Now that He holds his hand and seemeth satis- 
fied) 
The love that called you unappointed ways 

105 



THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT 

And filled your hearts with pride. 

A little while He left you free 

In passion's privilege 

To god it on the peaks of personality, 

But ye have walked too near the hither edge. 

Yet once I thought — 

My old heart meekened to an evening mood 

By dint of years and much beatitude — 

He was not jealous as the prophet taught, 

Nor loving-tolerant as mild teachers held, 

But swayed to mystical participation 

Of various delight 

By every chrysalides meandering flight 

And million-footed onset of heroic nation ; 

To instant joy impelled 

By every jet of life that from Time's fountain 

quelled. 
So deemed I, musing on the headstrong glee 
Of children at my knee, 
But He ordained his ways after another fashion. 

Fourth Youth. 
'Twas not the lover nor the warrior stirred 
His jealous arm to smite, 
Nor he who longed to launch forth as a bird 
In far and lonely flight 

106 



THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT 

To seek the truth of things, nor he who heard 

The choral winds in Nature's temple chaunting. 

All these He could endure, 

Since his creation and its furniture 

They merely used, nor vexed his ears with 

vaunting 
Themselves creators too 
And fashioners of worlds, and pilots of them 

flaunting 
Beside his in the blue. 
But some there were infatuate, audacious, 
To whom the world's vast girth 
Seemed niggard and unspacious ; 
Who, having clambered or been borne on wings 
Above the realms of sense 
From off God's secret altars ravished thence 
The plastic fire of his imaginings 
And brought it down to earth. 

Then, pale with supernatural intention, 

We builders of the over- world arose, 

And softly to their houses of ascension, 

Orbing as soft as April buds unclose, 

But bo welled of the furious lava-stream, 

Star after ordered star went up the heavens of 

dream : 
Each from the other ever differing, 

107 



THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT 

Glory from glory, 

And each a world summed and replete 
With all the human heart forebodeth well 
Or hoardeth to repeat 
Of tragical and sweet 
In earthly summer and the mortal spring 
And man's peculiar story, 
Yet by the mind made an immortal thing, 
Patiently purged and weaned of its corrupti- 
ble. 

Oh, how should Man into the dust be trod, 
Who is himself a god ! 
How should the lord of each enchanted isle 
For gazing on a brother-god's high sacrificial 

sorrow 
Say himself low and vile, 
Or for that Sufferer's sake 
Teen to his own undarkened being borrow, 
And in a gloom of abnegation break 
The wand wherewith he summoned from their 

sleep 
The whirlwinds of the everlasting deep, 
And souls of men and spirits of lost hours 
And spring's sequestered firstlings, the sky 

flowers, 
Bound to his golden powers ? 

108 



THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT 

Michael. 
I wait no longer on their stammering tongues ! 
Once more I pray thee rise and come away. 
The Valley darkens fast, and Heaven stays 
Thy single voice to make its concord full. 

Raphael. 

These voices we have hearkened lack as well, 
To make such concord as I care to hear. 

Michael. 
Then curse thee for a stubborn heart ! — Nay, 

nay, 
I will not curse thee whom I love. . . . Take 

heed 
Lest any wing patrolling in the dark, 
Mistaking thee for one of these, should smite. 

Raphael. 
Already from the deeps approacheth one, 
Staining the limbs and faces of the dead 
With amber as he flies. What clime has blown 
Azaziel's radiance to so blear a tinct ? 

Azaziel (flying past). 
Woe ! Woe ! unto the dwellers in this Vale. 
Woe unto them who wait the second death ! 
Prepare to meet the Wonn that dieth not I 

109 



THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT 

Raphael. 
Azaziel, hear ! What meaneth . . . f 

Michael. TT . 

He is past, 

Bearing his message further. How it sobs 

And falters on the wind ! 

Raphael. 

In the deeps begins 
A myriad lamentation. . . . 

Michael. 

is earer now, 

And mixed with keener individual cry. . . . 

Raphael. 

The sea of death sways moaning and recoils, 
Bristling with serried surf of forms uplift, 
Postures of supplication and despair, 
Forlorn attitudes ! 

Michael. 

From the starless sky 
A star shoots screaming, hushes in mid-flight, 
And stands at gaze above the vasty caves, 
The cafions and the aged wells of dark 
Toward which this valley plunges. 

110 



THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT 

Raphael. _. . , 

* Far below 

Disastrous splendor glares above the abyss, 

And in the midst a bulk of sinuous shade 

That lifts and swings a snaky head aloft 

Surveying where to strike. . . . 

Michael. k . 

Away ! Away ! 

Even now his pendulous neck doth sweep the 

Vale 

From wall to wall, incredibly advanced 

Leagues hither, though his lewder folds are still 

Hid backward in the abyss. Away ! Away ! 

From yonder peak we may behold all safe : 

To linger here even spirits dare not. 

Raphael. 

I tarry. Let me take thy mighty sword. 
A minstrel's hand can swing a blade at need. 

Michael. 
Not so. Forgive me this my violence ! 
Thy soul is all distraught and desperate, 
And I must save thee in thine own despite. 

(He overpowers Baphael, and bears Mm aloft just 
as the enormous swinging head of the Serpent 
blots out the scene. ) 

111 



ACT V. 



Time : as in Act IV* 



ACT V. SCENE I. 

An exposed upland : one side looks down into the 

Valley of the Judgment, on the others the snow-peaks 

fade into the visionary cliffs and slopes crowned by 

the battlements of Heaven. Sunset glow still lingers 

on the heights : the moon is rising. 



Raphael (awaking). 
Where are we, brother f I remember naught. 

Michael. 
Safe lifted o'er the Vale, and none too soon. 



Help me to rise. 



Raphael. 

Michael. 

Nay, rest thee yet a while. 



Raphael. 
Something of portent passes in the Vale — 
I cannot well recall, but know 'tis so 
By thy wild looking. Can thy vision pierce 
So downward through the mists ? Mine eyes are 

weak 
And blink at the mild moon. 

115 



THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT 

Michael. 

Spare thou to look. 
Even me it grieveth, tliee it will destroy 

With present heart-break. 

i 

Raphael. 

O remembrance now 
Creeps moaning through the sea-halls of my 

mind, — 
A sluggish neap, with loss and wreckage strewn ! 

Michael. 
The Serpent enters now that last defile 
High lifted toward the spiritual hills. 
Behind him as he came has silence fallen 
And gesture ceased : final ineloquence. 
These hither people are the lesser thewed 
But more inspirited, who held the fight 
Vanward against us, and who fell the first 
Before the whirlwind of our going down. 

Raphael. 
Is it too late to save this remnant few 
For seed of a new world, planted afar 
Beyond this trouble? Come, thy might and 

mine ! 
He lifts a questioning head and seems to stand 

116 



THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT 

Hesitant at the mouth of the defile : 
There give him battle. . . . 

Michael. 

Nay. 

Raphael. 

Then I alone. 
Michael. 

Too late ; and even if sooner, much too late ! 
He brings the second death ; his fangs have 

power, 
'Tis whispered, on the flaming seraphim 
To tarnish or to quench ; one venom fleck 
Flung from his jaws, how might it lame and 

scar 
Our substance archangelical. 

Raphael. 

Yes, yes, 

You give me reasons to it. Lovelier 

Such scars upon the breast, though mortal proven, 

Than that fair sigil set upon thy brow 

The morn of thy first victory. Why live, 

Why live, when all these wills that searched the 

earth — 

Until they found their one and inward love, 

Eefusing to be still — have ceased to search, 

Though quite unsatisfied t To feel the night 

117 



THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT 

Unvexed of longing, and the day purged blank 

Of laughter and of sorrow and of brawl ; 

No pride of life to glory in the sun, 

No ecstasy to mate the moon's increase, 

No heart interpreting the twilight thrush — 

All the heart's business done ! Nay, not for 

me ! 
Mine ear hath lain too long on Nature's pulse, 
I cannot miss that music. Let me go. 

Michael (still detaining him). 
Govern thy heart and tongue. Nature, thou 

knowest, 
Was but a bye-thought of the Eternal Mind, 
A whim — extravagant, repented of, 
And now in its chief element of Man 
Annihilate and put away, save those 
Who rendered up their wills to His, and share 
This night with Him the immortal quietudes. 

Lo, where the Serpent enters ! Quick and dead 
Loosen their maimed embraces. From beneath 
Heaves the incumbent carnage. In the clefts 
And on the headlands scattered souls arise 
Expectant or imploring . . . Now he reigns 
Instant among them, and their sayings-nay 
Decrease and come to nothing. 

118 



THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT 

Raphael. , „ . ., 

All is done : 

The great refusal made. The wayward heats 

That might have moved God's blood to sweetest 

ends 

In dreams and deed, have bled themselves away, 

And peace is his, though profitless. 

Michael. TT . , T . , 

Hush ! Look ! 

The Worm goes on ! 

Raphael. 

What say'st thou ! Speak ! 
Mine eyes are still too dim, I see not well 
What passes 'neath the drifting fogs. 

Michael. He mounts , 

He lays his length upward the visioned hills, 

The inviolable fundaments of Heaven ! 

There where he climbs the kindled slopes grow 

pale, 
Ashen the amethystine dells, and dim 
The starry reaches. . . . Now he coils his bulk 
About a foreland, and the nacrous light 
It beetled with turns cinder. High he piles 
His folds, and seems to note the upward way. 
Hark, the trump sings to battle ! I am called. 

(He flies upward toward the walls of Heaven. ) 
119 



THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT 

Raphael (alone). 
O darkest creature of God's shaping thought, 
Shamefullest born, in that unsacred hour 
When, pining for the pools of ancient sloth, 
His soul repenteth Him that he had made 
Man, and had put that passion out to use ! 
Cleavest thou inward now to find the heart 
That bore thee shuddering and hath fostered 

thee 
With secret sweat of agonizing brows ? 
Has this day's great defection armed thy fang 
And lit thy wrath to seek Him where He sits 
Sickening amid his harsh-established peace ? 

On which side then shall Eaphael be found, — 
The sociable spirit, very friend of man 
And Nature's old-time lover ? Surely there 
At God's right hand, with a loud song for sword 
To beat the Spectre back when armies fail, 
And cheer Him as the shepherd Israel's king. 

(He flies after Michael.) 



120 



ACT V. SCENE II. 

Raphael stands on a promontory of the cloudy 
slope up which the Serpent has passed. The Valley 
of the Judgment lies far beloiv. 

Raphael. 
A mortal weariness beats down my wing ; 
I cannot farther. Here I must remain, 
"Whether I will or no a truant still, 
Wliile battle rages round the heart of God, — 
A recreant on the very slopes where first 
With wistful feet from Heaven adventuring 
I sought those little flowers of shyest light 
Whose earthly hue and palpitance would speak 
A wild distress of sweetness, till my blood 
Sang wander-songs, and pictured to itself 
The happy outland chances of the spring. 
I think none grow now in the muted dells 
Nor on the chidden reaches ; yet — perhaps — 
If I should search as earnestly as once. . . . 

My mind strays like a fevered child's to-night 
And plays with leaves and straws, regarding not 
How fate comes on next instant ! . . . Not alone, 
Not all coinpanionless must I abide 
Its coming, love be praised who sends me love 

121 



THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT 

And comradeship now at my dearest need ! 
For hither through the wintry windelstrae 
Flee, veer, and flee a fluttered company 
With hands outstretched and groping. Woman- 
kind, 
By the lorn influence that companions them 
And hangs grief in the wind. ... A taper's 

flame 
Streams backward o'er each trembling hand. 

'Twill be 
The seven dear sister spirits ancillary 
Who tend their lamps of laud before the Throne. 

Stay, sisters, stay ! They swerve aside and flee 
More terror-stricken still. I prithee stay ; 
? Tis Eaphael calls ! 

First Lamp. 

O then art thou too fled ? 
Haste, let us flee together ! We had thought 
All but the timid spirits still abode 
The battle's outcome. Timid thou art not, 
Though woman-gentle ; is the battle lost? 
Or won ? Oh, surely won, since thou art here. 

Baphael. 
I come from earthward. Mortal weariness 

122 



THE MASQUE OP JUDGMENT 

Beat down my wing, and I was forced to stay. 
How goes the struggle ! 

First Lamp. 

In and in it stormed 
From ring to lessening ring, until we fled, 
I and the sister Lamps, save only one, 
Our meekest and most patient flame of praise, 
Whom naught could make afraid. Now by the 

wind 
Distract, we wander on these withered hills. 

Second Lam}). 
How withered from the day thou brought' st us 

hence 
Flowers for our lampads ! — tiny troublous things 
That living pierced us with a faint unrest 
And dying left a nameless woe behind. 

Raphael. 
Call up each sweetness over-lived, for soon 
Sweet shall be sweet no more, nor sad be sad. 
Momently yonder Heaven's heart of light 
Throbs feebler, and the dark gains on the day. 

Now where he runs afar, the sun hath felt 
Sharp pangs delay his feet, for swiftly hither 

123 



THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT 

In the distressful beaming of the moon 
Comes on the wasted light of Uriel. 

Uriel (approaching). 
The dream is done ! Petal by petal falls 
The coronal of creatured bloom God wove 
To deck his brows at dawn. 

Raphael. 

ISo hope remains I 
Uriel. 

To save Him from himself not cherubim 
Nor seraphim avail. Who loves not life 
Eeceiveth not life's gifts at any hand. 

Raphael. 
And life He loved not, though it sprang from 
Him! 

Uriel. 

He loved it not entirely, good and ill. 

Raphael. 
For what end should we love an evil thing! 

Uriel. 
Better than I thou knowest, truant soul ! 
Who all the summer hours didst love to stoop 
O'er insect feuds, herb- whisperings, and watch 

124 



THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT 

The prurient-fingered sap startle the trees 
To sudden laughter of bloom. Better than I 
Thou knowest what lewd rebellion stings the core 
Of nature, bidding every seed awake 
To sacramental life after its kind ; 
Better than I thou knowest what cruelties 
Bage round about each starry heroism, 
Out of what murky stuff the lover builds 
His soul's white habitation. ? Tis not mine 
To lesson thee how height and depth are bound 
So straitly that when evil dies, as soon 
Good languishes, nor how the flesh and soul 
Quicken with striving, and when strife is done 
Decline from what they were. 

Raphael. 

Would He had dared 
To nerve each member of his mighty frame — 
Man, beast, and tree, and all the shapes of will 
That dream their darling ends in clod and star — 
To everlasting conflict, wringing peace 
From struggle, and from struggle peace again, 
Higher and sweeter and more passionate 
With every danger passed ! Would He had 

spared 
That dark Antagonist whose enmity 
Gave Him rejoicing sinews, for of Him 

125 



THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT 

His foe was flesh of flesh, and bone of bone, 
With suicidal hand He smote him down, 
And now indeed His lethal pangs begin. 

First Lamp (to Uriel). 
Brother, what lies beyond this trouble % Death ? 

Uriel. 
All live in Him, with Him shall all things die. 

Second Lamp. 
And the snake reign, coiled on the holy hill ? 

Uriel. 
Sorrow dies with the heart it feeds upon. 

Raphael. 
Look, where the red volcano of the fight 
Hath burst, and down the violated hills 
Pours ruin and repulse, a thousand streams 
Choked with the pomp and furniture of Heaven. 
In vain the Lion ramps against the tide, 
In vain from slope to slope the giant Wraths 
Bally but to be broken. Dwindling dim 
Across the blackened pampas of the wind 
The routed Horses flee with hoof and wing, 
Till their trine light is one, and now is quenched. 

126 



THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT 

Uriel. 

The spirits fugitive from Heaven's brink 

Put off their substance of ethereal fire 

And mourn phantasmal on the phantom alps. 

Fourth Lamp. 
Mourn, sisters ! For our light is fading too. 
Thou of the topaz heart, thou of the jade, 
And thou sweet trembling opal — ye are grown 
Grey things, and aged as God's sorrowing eyes. 

First Lam}). 

My wick burns blue and dim. 

Second Lamp. 

My oil is spent. 
Raphael. 

The moon smoulders ; and naked from their seats 
The stars arise with lifted hands, and wait. 



127 



NOV 13 1800 



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